Liberal Professor Denies that Black, White People Really Can be Friends

President Trump is often accused by liberals of being racist and incredibly divisive in our country, yet there are those on the left who seem to be bent on re-segregating different people groups in direct opposition to Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream for America.

Speaking on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, according to American Rhetoric, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told the crowd that his dream was that “the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”

Yet Yeshiva University professor Ekow N. Yankah, writing an opinion piece for the New York Times on Veterans Day, made it clear that he believes such a friendship cannot exist in Trump’s America.

MLK warned the black community that the Civil Rights Movement “must not lead us to a distrust of all white people.”

Yet Yankah wrote, “Donald Trump’s election has made it clear that I will teach my boys the lesson generations old, one that I for the most part nearly escaped. I will teach them to be cautious, I will teach them suspicion, and I will teach them distrust. Much sooner than I thought I would, I will have to discuss with my boys whether they can truly be friends with white people.”

Yankah acknowledged MLK’s dream, but said that there’s little reason for him or other minorities to “trust white people” and that “real friendship is impossible without the ability to trust others.”

In 1963, MLK said he dreamed that one day “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”

But Yankah half a century later declared, “As against our gauzy national hopes, I will teach my boys to have profound doubts that friendship with white people is possible. When they ask, I will teach my sons that their beautiful hue is a fault line. Spare me platitudes of how we are all the same on the inside.”

MLK told America, “With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.”

In contrast, Yankah wrote, “For many weary minorities, the ridiculous thing was thinking friendship was possible in the first place. It hurts only if you believed friendship could bridge the racial gorge. Of course, the rise of this president has broken bonds on all sides. But for people of color the stakes are different. Imagining we can now be friends across this political line is asking us to ignore our safety and that of our children, to abandon personal regard and self-worth.”

“Don’t misunderstand,” he added. “White Trump supporters and people of color can like one another. But real friendship? In the coming years, when my boys ask again their questions about who can be their best friend, I pray for a more hopeful answer.”

Now Fox News' Tucker Carlson has featured Yankah on his show to question him about the divisive claims his New York Times piece makes: